| CTHEORY EDITORS on Tue, 2 Feb 1999 02:09:44 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| <nettime> Article 68-Resisting the Neoliberal Discourse of Technology |
_____________________________________________________________________
CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 22, NO 1-2
Article 68 99/02/01 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
_____________________________________________________________________
Resisting the Neoliberal Discourse of Technology:
=================================================
The Politics of Cyberculture in the Age of the Virtual Class
============================================================
~John Armitage~
Totalitarianism is latent in technology. It was not merely
Hitler or Mussolini who were totalitarian, or the Pharaohs as
far as I am concerned. Totalitarianism is already present in
the technical object. - Paul Virilio [1]
Such penetrating assessments of technology are increasingly
exceptional: nearly all the political, economic, and cultural texts
that surround us suggest that we are entering a truly new
technological and democratic age. Indeed, modern day pharaohs, such
as Microsoft's Bill Gates constantly assert that the world is on
the brink of a "technological revolution". [2] Meanwhile, neoliberal
politicians, like American Vice President Al Gore, see the "Global
Information Infrastructure" as nothing less than the basis of a new
Athenian age of electronic democracy. [3]
The Neoliberal Discourse of Technology
--------------------------------------
Contemporary neoliberalism is the pan-capitalist theory and practice
of explicitly technologized, or "telematic", societies. [4]
Neoliberalism is of course a political philosophy which originated in
the advanced countries in the 1980s. It is associated with the idea
of "liberal fascism": free enterprise, economic globalization and
national corporatism as the institutional and ideological grounds for
the civil disciplining of subaltern individuals, "aliens" and groups.
However, while pan-capitalism appears largely impregnable to various
oppositional political forces and survives broadly uncontested, it
nonetheless relies extensively on a specifically neoliberal discourse
of technology. What is more, this discourse is principally concerned
with legitimating the political and cultural control of individuals,
groups, and new social movements through the material and ideological
production, promotion, distribution, and consumption of self-styled
"virtual" technologies like virtual reality (VR) and cyberspace.
These contentions about pan-capitalism, telematics, and the
neoliberal discourse of virtual technologies derive from the fact
that human labour is no longer central to market-driven conceptions
of business and political activities. Actually, as far as some
neoliberals are concerned, ~technology is now the only factor of
production~. [5] Artefacts like VR, cyberspace, and the Internet thus
embody not "use value" but what Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein
term "abuse value":
The primary category of the political economy of virtual
reality is abuse value. Things are valued for the injury that
can be done to them or that they can do. Abuse value is the
certain outcome of the politics of suicidal nihilism. The
transformation, that is, of the weak and the powerless into
objects with one last value: to provide pleasure to the
privileged beneficiaries of the will to purity in their
sacrificial bleeding, sometimes actual (Branch Davidians)
and sometimes specular (Bosnia). [6]
The neoliberal analysis of production under the conditions of
pan-capitalism and telemetry accordingly focuses not on the outmoded
Marxian conception of the "labor process", but on the technological
and scientific ~processing of labour~. [7] The result is that surplus
labor is transformed by relentless technological activity, and the
means of virtual production produce abuse value.
Technology and the Politics of Cyberculture
-------------------------------------------
The technological fixations of the neoliberals are, of course,
presently extending themselves from virtual production to virtual
culture; to technoscience and to cyberculture, including the culture
of cyborgs, cyberfeminism, cyberspace, cyberwarfare, and
cyberart. [8] Nietzsche emphasizes, in _The Wanderer and His Shadow_,
that technologies and machines are "...premises whose thousand year
conclusion no one has yet dared to draw." [9] Yet, in scarcely over
one hundred years, it has become clear that technology is not only
voraciously consuming what is left of "nature," but is also busily
constructing it anew. Nanotechnology, for example, brings together
the basic atomic building blocks of nature effortlessly, cheaply, and
in just about any molecular arrangement we ask. [10] Information and
communications technologies evoke the virtual architecture and
circuitry of fiber-optics, computer networks, cybernetic systems, and
so on.
These technologies, these assemblages, though, need to be appreciated
for what they are: synthetic materials transformed into instruments
of "the will to virtuality," or of human incorporation - even
"disappearance" - into cybernetic machinery. Cybercultural
technologies are agents of physical colonization, imperialists of the
human sensorium, created, like Frankenstein, by our own raw desire.
They represent what Virilio calls "the third revolution", the
impending bodily internalization of science and technology. As
Virilio recently defined the third revolution:
By this term I mean that technology is becoming something
physically assimilable, it is a kind of nourishment for the
human race, through dynamic inserts, implants and so on. Here,
I am not talking about implants such as silicon breasts, but
dynamic implants like additional memory storage. What we see
here is that science and technology aim for miniaturisation in
order to invade the human body. [11]
As a result, the division between living bodies and technology is
increasingly difficult to maintain; both are now so hopelessly
entwined in the "cyborgian" sociotechnical imagination. [12] We are
well on our way to "becoming machinic". As Deleuze and Guattari
comment: "This is not animism, any more than it is mechanism; rather
it is universal machinism: a plane of consistency occupied by an
immense abstract machine comprising an infinite number of
assemblages." [13]
Nevertheless, the technologically determinist assemblages of sundry
neoliberal computer mystics, like Jaron Lanier and John Perry Barlow,
are questionable because cybercultural technologies, like all
technologies, are ~innately political~. Technologies like VR do not
appear - like rainfall - as heavenly gifts. They have to be willed
into existence, they have to be produced by real human beings.
Information and communications technologies, for instance, both
contain and signify the cultural and political values of particular
human societies. Accordingly, these technologies are always
expressions of socioeconomic, geographical, and political interests,
partialities, alignments and commitments. In brief, the will to
technical knowledge is the will to technical power.
It is crucial, then, to redefine, and to develop a fully conscious
and wholly ~critical~ account of the neoliberal discourse of
technology at work in the realm of cyberculture; one that exposes not
only the economic and social interests embodied within cultural
technologies, but also their underlying authoritarianism. Maybe
Marshall McLuhan was right? The medium ~is~ the message. The question
is, what does it say? Moreover, how does it manage to say it so
eloquently, so perfectly, that some among us are more than "willing"
to trade corporeality for virtuality? And all for what? A chance to
dance to the (pre-programmed) rhythms of technologized bodies?
Indeed, it is hard to disagree with Hakim Bey when he writes:
Physical separateness can never be overcome by electronics,
but only by "conviviality", by "living together" in the most
literal physical sense. The physically divided are also the
conquered and the Controlled. "True desires" - erotic,
gustatory, olfactory, musical, aesthetic, psychic, & spiritual
- are best attained in a context of freedom of self and other
in physical proximity & mutual aid. Everything else is at best
a sort of representation. [14]
Technology and the Virtual Class
--------------------------------
What are the central political dynamics at work in the neoliberal
discourse of technology? Today, the development of this discourse is
also the development of the shifting determinations of the virtual
class. For it is this, "...social strata in contemporary
pan-capitalism that have material and ideological interest in
speeding up and intensifying the process of virtualization and
heightening the will to virtuality." [15]
Resisting the unconstrained development of the neoliberal discourse
of technology is vital because such resistance impedes the
contemporary development of the virtual class. To some of its
members, like Douglas Coupland, the reigning technological discourse
constitutes the narcissistic flowering of long-held personal
ambitions, while to others, like _Wired_'s neoliberal evangelist
Nicholas Negroponte, it represents the beginning of a new
techno-religion. To Alvin & Heidi Toffler, the neoliberal discourse
heralds the emergence of a whole new civilization while to Bill Gates
and Kevin Kelly it means material wealth and political influence
beyond measure. [16]
Certainly, it is possible to characterise the present period of
self-consciously "spectacular" technological innovation as being
driven primarily by pan-capitalism's need to arm itself against the
onset of virtual class warfare. [17] Without doubt, the virtual class
must, at some stage - and probably with the acquiescence, if not the
full participation of global technocratic, political and military
elites - confront living labour, actual communities, tangible spaces,
material environments, and physical, breathing, bodies. The
neoliberal discourse of technology therefore represents an attempt by
the virtual class to open up a new period in the cybernetic carnival
that is pan-capitalism. The unfolding of the neoliberal discourse of
technology is thus the unfolding of virtual class relations. This is
the true nature of social communications in the contemporary era.
For these reasons it is essential to advance unorthodox, bottom-up,
explanations of the evolution of the neoliberal discourse of
technology. The chief aim ought to be the equipping of the digitally
dispossessed with counter arguments and active political strategies
that will work against what the late Christopher Lasch might have
called "the revolt of the (virtual) elites and the betrayal of
(electronic) democracy." [18]
Make no mistake, VR and cyberspace have not simply opened up new
wealth generating possibilities for the virtual elites. They have
also opened up new political prospects for those who wish to see the
spectacular representational systems of crash culture disappear. What
is important in the interim, then, is to challenge the pronouncements
of the virtual class wherever they appear and join with others in a
comprehensive and detailed critique of the neoliberal discourse of
technology in a variety of fields ranging from VR to cyberwarfare and
beyond. [19] Further, such challenges need to involve a multiplicity
of individuals and groups. These might range from school kids and
students disenchanted with the increasing replacement of education by
mere technocratic information, to disaffected computer industry
workers, or simply local communities seeking control over their own
technological environments.
Virtual politics, therefore, should be founded on defying the
neoliberal discourse of technology currently being fashioned by the
virtual class. It is crucial to ensure that the political genealogy
of technology, of virtual reality, of the reality of virtuality, is
uncovered by numerous individuals, groups, classes, and new social
movements. Indeed, without such excavations, the increasingly
institutionalised neoliberal discourse of technology currently being
promoted by the virtual class will rapidly become a source of immense
social power. This is why concrete, corporeal, and ideological
struggles over the nature and meaning of technology are so important
in the realm of virtual politics. It is also why the specifically
neoliberal discourse of the virtual class needs to be countered.
The pan-capitalist revolution and the development from industrial to
virtual production have generated the neoliberal discourse of
technology. It provides the virtual class with an ideological
rationale for the ever increasing manufacture of virtual distractions
(e.g., movies, VR, and interactive video games). Consequently, many
human activities are no longer simply mediated through technology.
Indeed, they are so utterly "possessed" by technology that the
distinction between virtual activities and actual activities borders
on the incomprehensible. [20] The ambitions of the neoliberal
discourse of technology are not only unremitting but also potentially
infinite.
* * * * * * * *
Totalitarianism is latent in technology. It is not simply the virtual
class that is totalitarian. Totalitarianism is always present in
technology itself.
Virilio's acute observations on technology are therefore essentially
correct: his theoretical analysis indicates that while we are indeed
in the midst of some kind of technological transition, it is
improbable that such a transition will usher in a new era of digital
democracy. [21] On this view, then, humanity is not on the verge of
the kind of technological and democratic revolution envisaged by the
neoliberals.
What separates a ~critical~ interpretation of technology from that of
global technological entrepreneurs and leading politicians is a
determination to forge a radical understanding of technology's
consequences. The advantage of this kind of analysis is that it
focuses on key aspects of technology that are rarely, if ever, voiced
by computer manufacturers and political pundits. Indeed, the general
absence of a critical understanding of technology is one of the chief
reasons why so many people seem to be so baffled by the "mysteries"
of technology.
Thus, it is vital to resist both the neoliberal discourse of
technology and the contemporary development of pan-capitalism. In the
specific context of the political debates over the discourse of
cyberculture, then, it is important to question the uncritical and
antidemocratic conception of technology presently being elaborated
and disseminated by the virtual class in its quest for actual wealth
and power.
While technology is obviously an extremely important and determining
force, it is crucial to remember that it is not the only force or
agent of change. The virtual class is not simply an assortment of
technological and visual representations. In fact, it is all too
real. It is the class that at this moment is rewriting the history of
virtual and other technologies while simultaneously controlling their
organized production, distribution and consumption.
As a result of it's monopolistic control of technology, the virtual
class is presently being courted by the newly ascendant virtual
political class (of which Newt Gingrich in the US and Tony Blair in
the UK are examples). This class opposes all those who resist the
neoliberal discourse of technology in whatever form it takes (e.g.,
anti-road building and animal rights protests by young people). It is
time, then, to radically rethink, redefine and reinterpret the very
meaning of technology, politics, and cyberculture in the age of the
virtual class.
Notes:
------
[1] Paul Virilio and Carlos Oliveira. "The Silence of the Lambs: Paul
Virilio in Conversation". In _CTHEORY._ Vol 19. No 1-2. 1996. p.3.
[2] Bill Gates. _The Road Ahead._ , New York: Viking Press, 1995.
[3] See, for example, Al Gore. "Forging a New Athenian Age of
Democracy". In _Intermedia._ Vol 22. 1994. p.14-16.
[4] Much of my argument in the following pages draws on Arthur Kroker
and Michael Weinstein's _Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual
Class._ , Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1994, and New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1994.
[5] See, for instance, Jeremy Rifkin. _The End of Work: The Decline
of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era._
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995; Kevin Kelly. _New Rules for the
New Economy: 10 Ways the Network Economy is Changing Everything._
London: Fourth Estate, 1998.
[6] Kroker and Weinstein. _Data Trash._ p.64.
[7] See, for example, William Di Fazio. "Technoscience and the labor
process". In _Technoscience and Cyberculture._ Edited by Stanley
Aronowitz, Barbara Martinson and Michael Menser. London: Routledge,
1996. p.195-204.
[8] On the phenomenon of cyberculture and cyborgs see, for example,
Stanley Aronowitz, Barbara Martinson and Michael Menser. Eds.
_Technoscience and Cyberculture._ London: Routledge, 1996; Chris
Hables Gray. Ed. _The Cyborg Handbook._ London: Routledge, 1995.
[9] Friedrich Nietzsche. _The Wanderer and His Shadow._ New York:
Gordon Press, 1974. p.176.
[10] The most obvious reference here is, Eric Drexler. _Engines of
Creation._ New York: Anchor, 1986.
[11] Paul Virilio and John Armitage. "From Modernism to
Hypermodernism and Beyond: An Interview with Paul Virilio".
Translated by Patrice Riemens. Forthcoming in _Paul Virilio_, a
Special Issue of _Theory Culture & Society_ on the Work of Paul
Virilio. Vol 16. 1999.
[12] See, Donna Haraway. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and
Socialist-feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". In her _Simians,
Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature._ London: Free
Associations Books, 1991. p.149-181.
[13] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. _A Thousand Plateaus._
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. p.256.
[14] Hakim Bey. "The Lemonade Ocean & Modern Times: A Position Paper
by Hakim Bey".
(http://www.tO.or.at/hakimbey/hakimbey.htm, Internet, 1991). p.3.
[15] Kroker and Weinstein. _Data Trash._ p.163.
[16] See, for instance, Douglas Coupland. _Microserfs._ Northampton:
Harper Collins, 1995; Nicholas Negroponte. _Being Digital._
New York: Knof, 1995; Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler. _Creating A
New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave._ New York: Turner
Publishing, 1995; Bill Gates. _The Road Ahead._ New York: Viking
Press, 1995; Kevin Kelly. _Out of Control: The New Biology
of Machines._ London: Fourth Estate, 1994, and Kelly's _New Rules
for the New Economy: 10 Ways the Network Economy is Changing
Everything._ London: Fourth Estate, 1998.
[17] Guy Debord. _Society of the Spectacle._ Detroit: Black and Red,
1983.
[18] Christopher Lasch. _The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of
Democracy._ New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995.
[19] See, for example, Chris Chesher. "Colonizing Virtual Reality.
Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992". In
_Cultronix._ Vol 1. No 1. 1994; Manuel De Landa. _War in the Age of
Intelligent Machines._ New York: Zone Books, 1991; Paul Virilio.
_War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception._ London: Verso, 1989.
[20] This argument can be found in Arthur Kroker. _The Possessed
Individual: Technology and Postmodernity._ Basingstoke
and London: Macmillan, 1992.
[21] Paul Virilio. "The Third Interval: A Critical Transition". In
Verena Andermatt Conley. Ed. _Rethinking Technologies._ Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993. p.3-12; Paul Virilio. _The
Art of the Motor._ Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993.
_____________________________________________________________________
John Armitage lectures in politics and media studies at the
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK. He is currently editing
_Paul Virilio_, a special issue of the journal _Theory Culture &
Society_, and working on _Virilio Live: Selected Interviews._
_____________________________________________________________________
* CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology
* and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews
* in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as
* theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape.
*
* Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
*
* Editorial Board: Kathy Acker, Jean Baudrillard (Paris),
* Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San Francisco),
* Siegfried Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne),
* Richard Kadrey (San Francisco), Geert Lovink (Amsterdam),
* Lynn Hershman Leeson (San Francisco), Stephen Pfohl
* (Boston), Andrew Ross (New York), David Cook (Toronto),
* William Leiss (Kingston), Sharon Grace (San Francisco),
* Marie-Luise Angerer (Vienna), Hans Mohr (Howe Island),
* Alberto Perez-Gomez (Montreal), Robert Adrian X (Vienna),
* Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein (Chicago),
* Patrice Riemens (Amsterdam), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough).
*
* Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK), J. Peter Burgess
* (Norway), Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Sweden).
*
* Editorial Assistant: phyla.exe
* World Wide Web Editor: Carl Steadman
____________________________________________________________________
To view CTHEORY online please visit:
http://www.ctheory.com/
To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
http://ctheory.concordia.ca/
____________________________________________________________________
* CTHEORY includes:
*
* 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory.
*
* 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture.
*
* 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape.
*
* 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers.
*
* CTHEORY is sponsored by New World Perspectives and Concordia
* University.
*
* No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
*
* Mailing address: CTHEORY, Concordia University, 1455
* de Maisonneuve, O., Montreal, Canada, H3G 1M8.
*
* Full text and microform versions are available from UMI,
* Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale
* Canada, Toronto.
*
* Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/
* Documentation politique international; Sociological
* Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political
* Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index;
* Film and Literature Index.
_____________________________________________________________________
---
# distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl